'Age of easy money'“I’ve been in trouble with them before. They’re all closed out now,” Vosburg said.

Most with credit cards said they carefully manage the debts on those cards, which often have high finance charges on unpaid balances. A sizable minority of them admitted to having serious problems with credit cards.

Some 16 percent of those with credit cards said they do not trust themselves to manage their own credit card debts.

For many, their debts cause stress; 20 percent of all adults in the poll said they worry about their debts most of the time.

“We live in an age of easy money and people pull out the plastic to medicate their pain,” said Chris Packard, a mental health therapist from Gilbert, Ariz.

“I have had patients who used their credit cards to punish spouses, to appease depression or anxiety or to try to satisfy an out-of-control child,” Packard said.

Experiencing the highest levels of stress from debts were people at their credit card spending limit; those who are unmarried and have children; those without jobs; and minorities.

Those with the lowest levels of stress from debt were retirees, Republicans, married people, college graduates and people between age 30 and 49.

Those groups’ stress levels were measured based on their responses to a series of questions asked of 1,000 adults about debt and stress.

Losing sleepPaul Lavrakas, a research psychologist, developed those questions on debt stress in the 1990s when he was faculty director of the Ohio State University Center for Survey Research.

Many people asked about their debts say it is affecting their health, Lavrakas said.

“They could not concentrate at times, they were losing sleep, taking their anxiety out on others,” Lavrakas said.